So, I’m on my rather indirect way to Italy to deliver my mom’s ashes for burial by family. I’ll be making a few stops along the way, hopefully with mom in tow, intact and undisturbed.
I knew the trip was going to off to a roaring start on this mission when I checked in my bag. First, the back story on the process I endured in actually packing “Mom”.
My brother Nick, who took care of Mom’s cremation, received her ashes packed in a small cardboard box (thus coining the title: “Mom-in-a-box”). Attached to the box were the necessary documents giving me permission to transport the said remains to its ultimate destination of Italy.
I had carefully planned, or so I thought, how I was going to pack and transport Mom on the trip. I had kept a large rolling backpack and daypack set that I used for my Europe trip last year back at my best friend Chris’ house in Daytona. With some luck, I could pack all my necessities into the large rolling backpack, and then pack Mom’s ashes into the daypack that attaches to it. It seemed to be a sound plan, at least in theory.
Then the problem. Turns out that the box was just a little too big to fit into the opening of the daypack. Chris and I tried several different ways to the get the box in. No go. “Maybe we should just take it out of the box”, Chris suggested. I shuddered at this thought for some reason. The idea of taking mom’s ashes out of the box, breaking the sealing tape and all, seemed so… wrong. I dismissed the idea, and kept trying to figure out how to get the box into the daypack. To no avail.
Eventually practicality kicked in, and I determined that Mom would have to come out of the box. Not being much of a religious or spiritual individual when it came to these things, I parked whatever apprehensions I once had, yanked out the scissors, and scored the tape. Both Chris and I half-stepped back a second. As if something was going to pop out of the box. No incident.
Then, I opened the box, and noticed that the plastic bag holding Mom’s remains was less than half the size of the box. I found this really odd. I was already surprised that the ashes fit in such a small box in the first place. Especially considering that Pop’s ashes were given to Judy in a rather large plastic “tub” with a lid (about the size of a “mega-size” bucket of laundry detergent). I was shocked to see that my mom’s ashes only accounted for about a fifth of Pop’s ash volume. Sure, she was a lot smaller than he was, but still, hmmmm…
Anyway, I finally pulled the bag out of the box, and Chris grabbed a gallon ziploc freezer bag. I slid the bag into the ziploc, and sealed it.
Then, I started coming up with all kinds of hypothetical situations that may cause the bag(s) to be ruptured during transport. Chris let his imagination run wild on this as well. The best scenario we conjured up was the one where another passenger on the London flight was going to be checking in his valued African spear collection. Surely, there would be no way the airline would let it be carried on, with all the uber-security going on and all.
Inevitably, there would be some turbulence, and the spears would come loose from their secure packaging. And, there would be some impact as well. One of the spears would be jerked free from the rest of them, and be hurled like a missle right at my bag, which is innocently in its trajectory. It would be all bad and horrible from there.
This risk notwithstanding, I opted to add an additional layer of bubble wrap around the bag. While this would do nothing to prevent the penetration of a well-sharpened hypothetical spearhead, it would surely help absorb some of the shock and impact that the bag would experience on a transooceanic flight.
I’m glad to say that my luggage (and Mom) made it to London without incident. The only real issue was perhaps that of the TSA agent in Orlando who hand-inspected the bag (within sight of me), and checked out the packaged ashes with extreme interest. Once she saw that name “Mom” sharpied on the bag, as well as the documentation from the crematorium, she freaked out quite visibly and audibly. She dropped the package back on to the inspection table in shock. I rather enjoyed that.
In any case, it’s a great time to be in London. The weather is as perfect as it gets in London. My pal Steffenie is as gracious as ever hooking me up with a place to crash for a couple of days while her roommate is out of town. I’ve also had a chance to meet up with Berina, whom I met back in Budapest last summer along with her friend Sheila, when we all went on a pub crawl. Stef, Berina and I all met up at a pub by Covent Garden last night, and had a really fun time. From there, we checked a couple other nightspots, closing the last place we went to. There’s something really cool about eating chinese food after hours in London.
I’ve got a couple of days left here, and hopefully the weather holds up. Then it’s off to our next stop for Mom and me.